Danuta Musiał
(Nicolaus copernicus University in toruń) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0707-6799
the role of Memory in the relationship Between ancient
romans and the Gods
Rola pamięci w relacjach starożytnych Rzymian z bogami
aBstract
In the article I discuss the role of rituals in the construction of religious memo-ry. The concept of cultural memory of Jan Assman is the starting point of my research. In Rome, the social frame of social memory created the customs of ancestors, and historical examples, the places in the topography of Rome and figures from the past were ‘the figu-res’ of memory. The meticulous observance of the ritual characteristic of the Roman reli-gion can be counted as an example of memory practices. Through the ritual people were confirming their memory of the gods and were reminding the gods of their expectations for them. The ritual was a kind of procedural memory that was connecting the Romans with their ancestors and the ancestral deities. Remembering and forgetting played an im-portant role in many rituals related to, for example, the admission of foreign deities to the Roman pantheon. The memory was a form of godliness, which is why in various forms it was present in the images of Gods and ritual practice.
Key words: cultural memory, mos maiorum, roman religion
1. iNtroDUctioN
Studies on memory are one of the more popular research trends within the framework of humanities and social sciences, albeit the scope of the
phenomenon is different in particular disciplines that belong to these fields1.
1 Introduction of the problem of memory in humanities: B. Szacka, Czas przeszły – pamięć
– mit. Współczesne społeczeństwo polskie wobec przeszłości, Warszawa 2006; M. Golka, Pamięć społeczna i jej implanty, Warszawa 2009; M. Saryusz-Wolska, Spotkania czasu z miejscem: studia
The publications from the last thirty-some years clearly show that ‘memory turn’ is also clearly noticeable in historiography, especially in the works on the most recent history. Jay Winter, in an article discussing the ‘obsession with memory’ characterising the studies of the history of the 20th century, indicates that its source are the experiences of the two world wars, and,
most of all, the trauma of the Holocaust2. The person Winter considers to
be the father of the ‘memory’ boom is Pierre Nora, whose extensive work on the realms of memory (1984–1992) met with great interest of historians. Nora showed that memory preserved in monuments, street names, objects, holidays, religions, myths, legends, and historical works, is our key to learning about and getting accustomed to the past. In a conclusion to the quoted text Winter draws attention to the dangers carried by excessive usage of the issues of memory in the historical discourse and indicates that to a significant extent they are identical to the ones pointed out by the representatives of other disciplines. In his opinion the most important problems arise from the great conceptual chaos, impeding understanding of certain theories as well as mutual understanding between researchers. The fact that everyone is discussing memory does not mean that everyone assigns the same significance to this word.
Memory should not be perceived as a homogeneous phenomenon, as under the influence of different factors it can be interpreted in different ways – this applies both to individual and social memory. In general, memory depends on the place, time, gender, social status, ethnic origin, and religion This reminds one of the problems with understanding other terms, deeply entangled culturally and historically, such as love, hate, shame, etc., also being an object of historical analyses.
Do societies remember? A positive answer to this question was given in the 1930s by a French sociologist, Maurice Halbwachs, to whom the contemporary ‘memory studies’ owe two essential concepts: ‘collective memory’ and ‘social frameworks of memory‘. The central point of his theory is a belief that the social group in which we function creates frameworks for our individual memory. Therefore, what and how we remember does not depend on us, but rather on the visions of the past of our environment. Halbwachs’ ideas have long remained on the fringe of the modern humanistic thought, and only at the end of the previous age that they found their place in the debates surrounding the problems of memory, i.a. owing to the studies initiated by Jan
o pamięci i miastach, Warszawa 2011; P. Connerton, Jak społeczeństwa pamiętają, transl. by
M. Napiórkowski, Warszawa 2012.
2 J. Winter, The Memory Boom in Contemporary Historical Studies, ‘Raritan: A Quarterly
and Aleida Assmann. Based on the views of Halbwachs, Assmann developed the theory of ‘cultural memory’, enabling better understanding of the process of development of the sense of community by a group of people connected by symbolic ties in the present and the sense of connection with historical or mythical ancestors. In the process of creation of ‘cultural memory’ the process of reminding, transmission of knowledge about the past, is of key significance, as relations within a group are created owing to this process,
determining what nowadays in general we refer to as ‘identity’3.
Assmann’s theory has been developed on the basis of studies on the phenomenon of memory in ancient societies (Egypt, Israel, Greece), therefore it met with major interest of the historians of the ancient world, inspiring the development of studies on different aspects and functions of memory within this discipline. An interesting area for exploration turned out to be the republican Rome with its developed practices of memory which constitute an integral part of the political, social and religious system. In the recent years we have been dealing with a clear increase in the number of works focusing on the significance of various aspects of memory in Roman culture. Their authors are unanimous in indicating the usefulness of the research tools created by Assmann, primarily in the studies on the role of
cultural memory in the process of construction of Roman identity4.
2. Mos MaioRuM – the fraMeworks of MeMory
The control of memory and forgetting has always been of the greatest concerns of classes, groups and persons who dominated historical societies. It was no different in ancient Rome, where memory was the privilege of the rulers, i.e. the aristocratic elite, which constructed its identity referring to the model developed by the ancestors. The basis for 3 R. Traba, Wstęp, in: J. Assmann, Pamięć kulturowa. Pismo, zapamiętywanie i polityczna
tożsamość w cywilizacjach starożytnych, transl. by A. Kryczyńska-Pham, Warszawa 2008,
pp. 11–26.
4 Important publications in the recent years include: H.I. Flower, The Art of Forgetting:
Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture, Chapel Hill 2006; A. Rodríguez Mayorgas, La memoria de Roma: oralidad, escritura e historia en la república romana, Oxford 2007; as well
as the volumes of studies being a result of a major research project implemented under the supervision of Karl Galinsky: ‘Memoria Romana’: Memory in Rome and Rome in Memory, ed. by K. Galinsky, Ann Arbor 2014; Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire, ed. by K. Galinsky, K.D.S. Lapatin, Los Angeles 2015; Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity, ed. by K. Galinsky, Oxford, 2016. The website of the project presents a list of the most recent detailed publications concerning the issues of memory in Rome: http://www.laits.utexas. edu/memoria/ [access: 28 I 2018].
this model, functioning at different levels of public life was the system of exchange of services and benefits based on trust, ‘good faith’ (bona fides) and the feeling of gratitude (gratia). The condition of stability for this system was that the main participants of the common set of values should follow the standards, models of activities and behaviours, designated by the Latin authors with the term mos maiorum. This concept is translated as ‘ancestral custom’ or more generally as ‘tradition’, primarily following the definition of Warron, mentioned by Servius in a comment to Virgil’s Aeneid. It specifies that a custom (mos) accepted by everyone with the passage of
time becomes a tradition (consuetudo)5. The term was clarified in greater
detail in the Festus’ lexicon, where we read that mos is an institution of the ancestors (institutum patrium), therefore the memory (memoria) of the
ancients6. Claudia Moatti calls this particular kind of memory inherited
from the ancestors the ‘memory of the City’7. Thus understood, memory
would be a kind of knowledge about the past, which was used when evaluating the conduct of the ‘contemporary’, which corresponds to the concept of ‘cultural memory’ outlined by Assmann. Danièle and Yves Roman, in a work on the identity discourses of the Romans, emphasising the significance of the phenomenon, call the respect for the standards established in the past the ‘second religion’ of the Roman aristocracy. The ancestors were a source of authority (auctoritas), which legitimised power
(nobilitas), as a guard of tradition and its only legal interpreter8.
Vagueness of the concept of mos maiorum was one of the sources of its incredible effectiveness as a regulator and measure of social behaviours of Roman aristocrats of both genders in private and public lives, both in the relations with other members of the society and the external world. The authority of the ancestors also guaranteed the functioning of all the institutions, which is exemplified by the Senate. The significance and competences of this most important institution of the Republican Rome arose exclusively from mos maiorum, therefore the scope of its powers was practically unlimited. The statement ‘our ancestors (maiores nostri) decided’ or ‘did so’ had the weight of an argument resolving doubts concerning
moral, legal, political, religious, and even military principles9.
5 Servius, Commentarii in Vergilii Aeneidos, 7, 601 (Thilo–Hagen). 6 Festus, De verbotum significatu, 146. 3 (Lindsay).
7 C. Moatti, Experts, mémoire et pouvoir à Rome, à la fin de la République, ‘Revue historique’
2003, 626 (2), pp. 303–325.
8 D. Roman, Y. Roman, Aux miroirs de la ville: images et discours identitaires romains: (IIIe
s. avant J.-C. – IIIe s. après J.-C.), Collection Latomus, 303, Bruxelles 2007, pp. 105–107.
9 K.J. Hölkeskamp, Reconstructing the Roman Republic: an Ancient Political Culture and
The ancestral custom was passed in the process of remembering the past, therefore, the greatest danger to tradition was forgetting, which was supposed to be prevented by the ‘memory experts’. From a formal point of view, this type of function was performed in Rome by the highest officials, senators and priests. With the passage of time the significance of antiquarians, grammarians, lexicographers, collectors of exempla, whose knowledge was widely used in public life, increased. The person who wants ‘his audience to regard honour will collect examples from our ancestors (maiorum exempla), which may be imitated with glory, though attended with danger; he will expatiate on immortal fame among
posterity’, stated Cicero10. Each generation had its own relations with the
past. Cicero often referred to the times of the Scipiones (2nd century BC), and in the period of the Empire the times of Cicero were a source of positive examples. As far as religious customs were concerned, the most frequent reference point were the royal times. In conclusion, it can be assumed that
exempla, places in the topography of the City and the figures from the past
are Assmann’s ‘figures of memory’, owing to which standards and models were constructed that were binding in the ‘present’, and renewing the
cultural memory of Rome11.
3. the MeMory of GoDs aND the MeMory aBoUt the GoDs. What differentiated Romans from other peoples and was a source of their power was, in Cicero’s opinion, the knowledge that the gods ruled everything. Religious practice, that is religio and pietas, was an integral part of their cognizance. Both of these closely connected concepts nowadays pose numerous interpretation problems, but to put it in simplified terms,
religio is a general term for obligations fulfilled with regard to the gods
recognised by the state and fulfilled by the officials and priests of the ‘Roman people’ representing the state. Their scrupulous fulfilment was
a measure of piety, which is usually designated by the term pietas12.
The relations between the tutelary gods and the citizens were regulated by a continuously renewed and renegotiated contract. The former were
10 Cicero, De oratore 2. 335, (English version translated by J.S. Watson).
11 C. Moatti, La raison de Rome: naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République (IIe–Ier
siècle avant Jésus–Christ), Paris 1997, p. 321; M. Bettini, Mos, mores et mos maiorum ’invenzione dei «buoni costumi» nella cultura romana, in: Le Orecchie Di Hermes: Studi Di Antropologia e Letterature Classiche, Torino 2000, pp. 241–292.
12 Cicero, De natura deorum, 1. 2.3; 1. 41. 116; 2. 3. 8; D. Musiał, Dionizos w Rzymie,
represented by the gods worshipped at the Capitol, headed by Jupiter, and on the human side the religious authority was distributed to a various degree between: the senate, the officials and the priests, whereas later primarily to the emperor. If the power of Rome depended on the favour of the gods, it was natural that their anger could invite a disaster on the state, so in order to avoid this the Romans developed rigorous rules of communication with the gods based, as the relations in the human world, on the system of exchange of benefits. This was possible as divinity in polytheism had a different dimension than what monotheism accustomed us to. The Romans understood that immortal gods are more powerful than humans and therefore they are entitled to special privileges, but they saw fellow citizens in them, organised into something in the form of a separate state. Due to this, the representatives of the Roman people were not pleading – they were rather their partners. Their attitude towards the gods was to a certain extent similar to the relations between a client (the
Romans) and a patron (the gods)13. However, it should be kept in mind
that this kind of bond did not apply to all the gods known to the Romans, only those whose ‘Roman identity’ was legitimised by mos maiorum, i.e. that their cult had been established by the ancestors. At the end of the 1st century BC Livy wrote: ‘those alone are the true gods, whom our ancestors
appointed to be worshipped, revered and solemnly invoked...’14.
The consequence of treating gods as patrons was that they had their duties towards the City. They were expected to provide care and support to all the activities undertaken by the officials. The addressee of these expectations was usually Jupiter Best and Greatest (Jupiter Optimus
Maximus), who was a guarantor of the agreement with the ‘ancestors’ on
the ‘exchange of benefits’. In the case of religious issues the personification of maiores were the first kings, Romulus and (most of all) Numa Pompilius. Rome owed to the first one the ritual of consulting Jupiter on the matters of the state (auspicia), and to the latter the methods of performing rituals (sacra). Cicero thought that a lack of respect to the gods would be equivalent to disloyalty to mos maiorum, which in turn would have tragic consequences to the Roman state. Trust (fides) and justice (iustitia), which the community (societas) was based on, would dwindle. Institutions introduced by the ancestors were supposed to prevent this disaster from happening, most important of which were, in the opinion of Cicero, rituals
13 J. Scheid, Numa et Jupiter ou les dieux citoyens de Rome, ‘Archives de sciences sociales
des religions’ 1985, 59, pp. 41–53.
(religiones) worshipping the immortal gods15. This opinion is confirmed
by the definition of mos quoted above from Festus’ lexicon, ending with a formula indicating that the ancestral custom was mainly related to the religious rituals (religiones, caerimoniae). Owing to the rituals, a state of equilibrium was maintained between the world of humans and the world
of gods, a kind of ‘peace with the gods’ (pax deorum)16. This peace constantly
had to be confirmed by means of paying the gods due respect, called pietas by the Romans, which in the religious context is translated as ‘piety’.
A French sociologist of religion, Danièle Hervieu-Léger, talks about religion as a chain of memory, and as the starting point she adopts the thesis of Halbwachs, that there is no religion without memory. The researcher does not deal directly with the antique world, but in general with the religions of ritual, therefore her reflections can be helpful in the understanding of religious memory of the Roman polytheism, which was a ritualistic religion to the full extent of this word. The aim of every religion that is deeply conservative due to its nature of a social phenomenon, in the opinion of Hervieu-Léger, is preservation of memory about the past, therefore ‘any religion implies a specific mobilisation of the collective memory’, which we find in the language, organisation and the daily practices of traditional societies. Similarly to collective memory, religious memory is selective in nature, as it is a result of the process of recollection (anamnesis) of ‘a past, which gives meaning to the present and contains the future. The practice of anamnesis, of the recalling
to memory of the past, is most often observed as a rite’17.
The measure of piety in the Roman interpretation was scrupulous repetition of the rites, which in this context can be called an example of memory practices. They were a confirmation of the human memory of those, to whom Rome owes its power. People constantly reminded the gods their merits to them, and the gods should in turn remember about these merits. To us, the modern, formed to a significant extent by the Christian, monotheistic concept of God, it is difficult to accept the view that one can impose some rules on a god, that a deity should do something in order to deserve the respect of its believers. Meanwhile, Romans addressing the gods with a request for a favour reminded that they meticulously fulfilled their obligations arising from the tradition, which was supposed to confirm their reliability and claims to divine support. They also recounted what benefits they received from the gods earlier, which presented the
15 Cicero, De natura deorum, 1. 2. 4.
16 P. Madejski, Pax deorum?, in: Terra, mare et homines: studies in memory of Professor
Tadeusz Łoposzko, ed. by H. Kowalski, P. Madejski, Lublin 2010, pp. 109–119.
17 D. Hervieu-Léger, Religia jako pamięć, pol. transl. by M. Bielawska, Kraków 2007,
person making a request in favourable light and confirmed that person’s piety. Gods were expected to remember those who respect their power and show respect by offering sacrifices in accordance with the ancestral
custom, in other case they would be recognised as ungrateful18.
Gods were owed constant gratitude, even when people did not expect any particular benefits from them. Tacitus recollected this when reporting the words of Emperor Claudius addressed to the senators: ‘For the moment, in-deed, all was flourishing; but they must show their gratitude to the favour of Heaven by making sure that the sacred rituals observed in the time of hazard
were not forgotten in the day of prosperity’19. Mutual relations with the gods
required a tool supporting memory. This function was fulfilled by a ritual. David Manier and William Hirst in a text on the cognitive taxonomy of collective memory refer to a ritual as a mnemonic tool operating as
‘procedural memory’20. In Rome, meticulous repetition of rituals served to
confirm and maintain the memory of those, who the City owed its power to, i.e. the divine patrons and ancestors who established relations with the world of gods. Rituals strengthened the community by unifying all the
citizens, both the present ones and the ones from the past21.
In Rome not only was it important to remember to follow cult practice, but also to remember how to do it. Catherine Baroin refers to this type of memory as ‘worship memory’ and emphasises that it applied to the principles of the cult, not such or other interpretations (quite often
contradictory) of a ritual that we find in the sources22. The multithreaded
reflection on the ritual presented in Latin literature is an aspect of culture and does not concern what we tend to call a religion, therefore it did not affect the principles regulating the behaviour of the cult. This in turn was regulated by oral tradition and the interpretations of its guardians, i.e. the officials, senate and the members of priest colleges, which were kept in the archives in the form of written statements. The need for expert intervention appeared, for example, in a situation when, due to an error of the celabrants or any other event deviating from the standard, the sacrificial procedure was disrupted, and a decision was usually made to repeat the 18 C. Baroin, Se souvenir à Rome: formes, représentations et pratiques de la mémoire, Paris
2010, p. 193.
19 Tacitus, Annales, 11, 15, 2, (English version by Clifford H. Moore).
20 D. Manier, W. Hirst, A Cognitive Taxonomy of Collective Memories, in: Cultural Memory
Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. by A. Erll, A. Nünning, Berlin–
New York 2008, pp. 253–261.
21 J. Scheid, “Ex decretis prioribus nihil immutamus”. Du conservatisme religieux des
Romains, ‘Kernos’ 2008, 21, http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/1614 [access: 21 I 2018].
ritual. For the Romans it was a clear and fully authorised solution to the problem, as the principles of behaviour of the cult, the rules concerning the functioning of the temples, etc., were considered constant – after all, the authority of the ancestors stood behind them.
Religious innovations were not as rare in the long history of the City as it would seem from the previous paragraph. Paradoxically, they were not in a contradiction with mos maiorum, provided that they were not treated as a novelty, but a form of restoring forgotten rituals, or fulfilling obligations towards the gods that were neglected in the past. The way in which this ‘novelty’ was integrated into the Roman religious system was decisive, as this procedure had to be applied in accordance with the ancestral custom. In Festus’ lexicon we read that the ones referred to as the foreign cults (peregrina sacra) are the ones ‘evoked’ (evocati) to Rome in the time of war
or in the time of peace for various religious reasons23. This latter case is
illustrated, according to the quoted testimony, by the cults of Magna Mater from Phrygia, Ceres from Greece and Asclepius from Epidaurus.
In both cases, memory played a significant role, both in the form of recollecting and forgetting. The first one played a significant role in the process of naturalisation in Rome of the goddess Cybele, brought (204 BC) from Asia Minor under the name of ‘Great Mother’ (Magna Mater). Upon Tiber it was recollected that the goddess came from the area, where Troy was located, where Aeneas, ancestor of the Romans, originated from. It is therefore no wonder that his descendants did not have a problem with recognising the goddess as ‘Roman’ which was confirmed by means of erection of a temple devoted to her on the Palatine Hill. The rituals worshipping Cybele, controversial from the Roman point of view, were limited to a single day in a year, when a colourful procession of Phrygian
priests went outside the walls of the sanctuary24.
In the case of a military ritual of ‘evocation’ (evocatio), the ideas was to convince the gods of the enemy to support the Romans in exchange for the promise to be granted a cult. Pliny emphasises that ‘on the occasion of a siege, it was the usage, the first thing of all, for the Roman priests to summon forth the tutelary divinity (evocari deum) of that particular town, and to promise him the same rites, or even a more extended worship
(cultus), at Rome’25. Some more information on this ritual is presented in
the later texts, from the 4th and early 5th century, as the already quoted comment of Servius to Aeneid and Saturnalia by Macrobius. They indicate
23 Festus s. v. peregrina sacra, 268 (Lindsay). 24 J. Scheid, Ex decretis, p. 196.
that apart from weakening the enemy by means of depriving of divine support, the aim of the ritual was to avoid a situation in which tutelary gods would be enslaved together with the residents of the captured town. This act would be against the law (Macrobius) and sacrilegious (Servius).
From the point of view of the discussed problems the most interesting element is the formula of the prayer/spell (carmen) that was meant to induce the tutelary gods to leave the previous believers. Servius notes that it contained words that were supposed to invoke terror (metus),
fear (formido) and oblivion (oblivio) in the besieged26. Macrobius quotes
a formula that was supposedly uttered by Publius Cornelius Scipio under the walls of Cartagina (146 BC). The leader addressing the gods beseeches them to leave their previous places (loca), temples (templa) and rituals (sacra) in the city and desert the people, inciting them into fear and oblivion (eique populo civitati metum formidinem oblivionem iniciatis). In the following words Scipio invites the gods of Carthage to Rome and offers
them temples and rites in his own city, which they should come to like27.
‘Oblivion’ is in this example an essential term and it applies to gods, as they are the ones who have to forget about their worshippers.
The testimony of Macrobius was treated with a great deal of mistrust by historians. The situation changed in the 1970s, after the publication of an inscription commemorating the capture of Isaura Vetus (currently in Turkey) by Publius Servilius Vatia, governor of Cilicia in 75 BC. Preserved in fragments, the text confirms the existence of evocative formula in the form close to the testimony of Macrobius with the offer to provide votive
offering directed at the tutelary gods of the captured city28.
4. coNclUsioN
In my opinion, the observations presented above give rise to several conclusions of general nature that are worth mentioning in the conclusion. All the deliberations on the role of memory in Roman culture have to take into account the most important category characterising the beliefs of Romans about themselves and the state, that is the deep faith in the favour of the gods. That the gods designed a great future of Rome was clear to the descendants
26 Servius, Commentarii in Vergilii Aeneidos, 2, 244 (Thilo–Hagen).
27 Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3, 9; 7–8; G. Ferri, L’evocatio romana. I problemi, ‘Studi e materiali
di storia delle religioni’ 2006, 30, pp. 205–244.
28 J. Le Gall, ‘Evocatio’, in: L’Italie préromaine et la Rome républicaine. Mélanges offerts à
Jacques Heurgon, vol. I, Rome 1976, pp. 519–524; D. Musiał, A. Gillmeister, „Evocatio deorum” as an example of a crisis ritual in Roman religion, ‘Graeco-Latina Brunensia’ 2018, 23, pp. 95-107.
of Romulus, and the military successes that ensured their rule over the world were a strong confirmation of the divine support. The consequence of this belief was a conviction that without gods Rome could not be ruled. Still, the representatives of the Roman people were not pleading, but rather partners, responsible together with the divine tutors of the state for the maintenance of
pax deorum, conditions of which were determined by the ancestors. In other
words, the fortune of the City depended therefore on the respect for mos
maiorum. The most important part of the ancestral custom were the religious
obligations, not only of the humans to the gods, but also of the gods to humans, which both parties should remember about. Therefore, memory was a form of pietas, which is why it was present in various forms both in the beliefs about gods, but primarily in the ritual practice.
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streszczeNie
W artykule omawiam rolę rytuałów w konstruowaniu pamięci religijnej. Punktem wyjścia moich badań jest koncepcja pamięci kulturowej Jana Assmana. W Rzymie społecz-ne ramy pamięci społeczspołecz-nej tworzył obyczaj przodków, a historyczspołecz-ne przykłady, miejsca w topografii Rzymu i postacie z przeszłości były ‘figurami’ pamięci. Skrupulatne prze-strzeganie rytuału charakterystyczne dla religii rzymskiej można zaliczyć do praktyk pa-mięci. Za pomocą rytuału ludzie potwierdzali pamięć o bogach i przypominali bogom o swoich oczekiwaniach wobec nich. Rytuał był rodzajem pamięci proceduralnej łączącej Rzymian z przodkami i bóstwami przodków. Pamięć i zapominanie odgrywa ważną rolę w wielu rytuałach związanych na przykład z przyjmowaniem do rzymskiego panteonu obcych bóstw. Pamięć była formą pobożności, dlatego w różnych formach był obecna w wyobrażeniach o bogach i w praktyce rytualnej.
Słowa kluczowe: pamięć kulturowa, mos maiorum, religia rzymska aBoUt the aUthor
Danuta Musiał – professor at the Institute of History and Archival Science of the Nico-laus Copernicus University, her scientific interests focus on the issues of myth and religion in the Greek-Roman world and the history of women in Rome. Selected publications:
“So-dalicium Nigidiani”. Les pythagoriciens à Rome à la fin de la République, ‘Revue de l’histoire des
religions’ 2001, 218, pp. 339–367; Dionizos w Rzymie (Dionysos in Rome, Kraków 2009); The
Princeps as the Pontifex Maximus: the Case of Tiberius, ‘Electrum’ 2014, 21, pp. 96–106; Divini-ties of the Roman Liberalia, ‘Przegląd Humanistyczny’ 2013, 56, pp. 95–100; with A.
Gillmeis-ter: Why were the “Oriental cults” invented?, ‘Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungari-cae’ 2017, 54, pp. 503–514; “Evocatio deorum” as an example of a crisis ritual in Roman religion, ‘Graeco-Latina Brunensia’ 2018, 23, pp. 95–107.
